Created in 1982 by the Virginia Tech Alumni Association, the Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching is presented to two Virginia Tech faculty members each year. Recipients are selected by the university’s Academy of Teaching Excellence from among those faculty members who have received Certificates of Teaching Excellence from their respective colleges in the preceding three years. Each recipient is awarded $2,000 and is inducted into the Academy of Teaching Excellence.

A member of the Virginia Tech community since 1993, Clements teaches graduate and undergraduate design, construction documentation, and cultural landscape studies of the United States. She frequently serves as an advisor on doctoral dissertations, and master’s degree and bachelor’s degree theses for students in Blacksburg as well as those at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center in the National Capital Region.

Since 2000, she has led an annual multidisciplinary education abroad program for students studying the built environment.

“Quite simply, her teaching has had a profound and lasting impact on her students,” wrote Brian Katen, associate professor and chair of the Landscape Architecture Program at Virginia Tech. “She is a dynamic presence in the studio and in the classroom. Her work is exemplary and deeply respected by her students, and her colleagues.”

The Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture recently honored Clements with its Excellence in Teaching Award.

“Terry is our program’s guiding force in the integration of community engagement and scholarship into our collective teaching,” added Katen. “Her commitment to the profound opportunities inherent in the collaborative work of the discipline and the transformative and empowering impact it can have on communities inspires and challenges our students.”

This past fall, Clements taught a multidisciplinary University Honors program service-learning course in which students from majors across the university worked with New River Valley Community Action and community members to prepare conceptual site plans to renovate the Headstart Playground in Floyd, Va.

In 2005, Clements worked with landscape architecture students on building stormwater treatment ponds for SolarHouse, the School of Architecture + Design’s 2005 entry in the Solar Decathalon.

Her research and outreach activities address the educational, legal and regulatory issues that define the discipline and practice of landscape architecture. Recent work has focused on the relationship between multiple intelligence theory and design, the history of women in landscape architecture, and the evolution of landscape architecture education and practice in the United States.

Clements has served on state and national American Society of Landscape Architects licensure committees, the ASLA Council on Education, and as a member of the Landscape Architecture Magazine Editorial Advisory Committee.

The Virginia Chapter of ASLA twice awarded her the President's Award for Service before granting her the Award for Distinguished Service, their highest award in 2004. She serves as the interim chair of the International Federation of Landscape Architects’ Committee on Education and has served as national ASLA vice president of education. She is a member of the Council of Educators of Landscape Architecture, the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Oral History Association, Community Built Association and Phi Beta Delta, the international honorary society of international scholars.

Clements received her Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and her Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Dedicated to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech takes a hands-on, engaging approach to education, preparing scholars to be leaders in their fields and communities. As the commonwealth’s most comprehensive university and its leading research institution, Virginia Tech offers 240 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 31,000 students and manages a research portfolio of $513 million. The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.